


Learned My Lesson Well

by false_alexis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-09
Updated: 2011-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-16 19:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/false_alexis/pseuds/false_alexis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Gwen Campbell was twelve years old, she wanted to be a knight. When she was thirty-four, she was a hunter. Somewhere in between things got complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learned My Lesson Well

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the excellent paper_rose16. This veers from canon in that Christian is Gwen’s brother; I hold that the failure to provide any siblings among the Campbell cousins was silly oversight on the part of the show’s creators. Spoilers through the first few episodes of Season 6.

_"Deine Zauber binden wieder was der Mode Schwert geteilt!”_  Carollers sing the Ode to Joy. Outside the bookshop where Gwen is hiding the weather is growing more bitter. She should leave soon. Life is hard, life is complicated for a family who hunts, and the holy hell that will be raised if she stays much longer- if they know where she has been, where’s she’s been taken for granted as a staple of the store- isn’t going to be lessened by Christmas spirit. Or any other kind of spirit.

Gwen Campbell is twelve years old, and she knows exactly what she wants. On this cold and dreary evening, she has discovered her true calling.

Gwen Campbell is going to be a knight. She’s going to be the bravest and the best, and she’s going to save people who need saving and they will thank her, and if they get angry at her she’ll point out what she just did and they won’t be angry any more. People are complicated. Killing things is less so.

She dog-ears the page while the clerk isn’t looking, and turns to put it back on the shelf. This same copy of this same book has been there since October. It won’t move now.

The wind is just as sharp as she imagined. The singers carry on, stubborn. She likes that about them, and she stops to stick fifty cents from her lunch money into the box, for some church or other.

Three days later Gwen tucks the book into her coat instead of slipping it back onto the shelf when she leaves.

- 

The sack of road salt lands in the truck bed with a satisfying thud. Christian revs the engine. Even as Gwen jumps into the cab he’s taking off, and inertia almost wrenches the door out of her hand before she slams it closed.

“You sure we’ve got the address?”

“Yeah, Christian, I’m sure.” Because she is; Gwen is thorough.

They pull up the old road going faster than they should. The house is the sort that kids always think ought to be haunted, even if it isn’t. It is absurd and cliché. The tires tear up the rugged grass that’s grown up where the drive used to be. Christian snorts as he throws the truck into park, gears screaming and protesting.

  
It takes them less than ten to get set up, no talking required. He loads his shotgun. Gwen smiles a little as she drags the bag around the building, making an unbroken circle of white to contain their prey. It isn’t often they get something this classic, this clear. Kill the bad thing. Be the heroes. No one around to love them, but they don’t need that. Gwen doesn’t need that anymore.

Christian has the second shotgun ready by the time she’s done with the circle. “You get a clear path?”

“Yes,” she says, because she did.

It isn’t one hundred percent whether they’ve got the ghost trapped in the building or have locked it out, but it doesn’t matter so much. The case appeared after a few kids had been terrorized, and one pair of newlyweds injured, and they’d been in Houston with nothing better to do and no desire to stay in the hot humidity any longer. A day of driving past stinking oil fields had brought them to a town with a lot of gossip and not much life. A few drinks, a little flirting, and Gwen had a tough-looking ranch hand trying to impress her with local ghost stories about the old woman who had died in the house and been buried in the floorboards by her son.

Gwen always found stories about dysfunctional families charming. She smiles to herself at this, because really, the ranch hand had been a lot kinder than he’d looked.

“Oy,” says her brother.

Gwen lets him go first, because he likes going first and arguing never got them anywhere good. (It did once get her a night of free beers in a really seedy place in Louisiana, but that’s not the point.) She doesn’t even see the ghost until they are creeping down the steps to the cellar, because apparently, this is the most stereotypical haunted house in the entire southwest. “Christian, we’ve got her in here.”

“Guess we’ve got the right house, then.” He’s got the flashlight, and she’s carrying the supplies for body-burning in a backpack, so it’s up to her to send a salt-round through the old bitch. She turns around and fires once. The ghost fades out, but Gwen pumps the Mossberg anyway, letting the sound click through the cellar, barely audible over the ringing in her ears.

They tear up half the cellar, finally finding her behind a brick wall. Her son was just as sick as the ranch-hand had said. She’s screaming bloody murder, and getting more determined, taking less and less time time to reappear after each blast.

“Chris, I need you to-” she shouts, because the cellar is small and the walls are thick and both of them had to put in earplugs ten minutes ago. He gets the idea, turns away from the wall to pick up his own gun while Gwen reloads.

She tries trading off for a close-range weapon, swinging a small tire iron through the damn ghost. The old woman just turns into in a game of ‘hide and seek’, staying half a step out of range at all times. Gwen curses at her. She laughs. It isn’t until she’s halfway across the room that she realizes the ghost is separating them. It takes a series of shots in rapid succession and a quick dash to get back to Christian’s side, where he almost- almost- has finished demolishing the false wall.

Christian rips the top off of a box of Morton’s and dumps the entire thing on her corpse. The ghost rushes forward, and Gwen’s out- how is she out?- of rounds as the dead bitch drags her brother to the ground, ghostly hands around his neck. Gwen has a suspicion she knows exactly how the old woman died. It would be sad, except for the part where she’s trying to kill Gwen’s brother.

You lose your head and you lose the hunt. But she can't think of that now.

The lighter falls from his hand into the rubble of the bricks they’d torn from the wall. Great. She fumbles from her jeans the pack of matches she stole from their motel. She lights it, drops it on the corpse. The woman laughs and laughs, and Christian chokes, because the stupid, stupid thing won’t catch, it won’t light on fire-

- 

Here’s the thing. When your dead uncle (great-uncle) sits down across from you in a classy Manhattan bar, and tells you that you need to come hunt dead things with your family, it is really hard to argue with him, because you are so damn busy trying to remember who and what is out of place. He’s out of place because he’s dead, except that in your life, dead things can come back. You’re both out of place because the blue lights and the nicely dressed people, the cocktail attire, were never supposed to be a part of what you did- unless it was for a job.

This isn't for a job. This is the life Gwen is living.

The real problem is that when you’re a hunter, you’re not supposed to take a job as a lawyer’s assistant, lying your way into a position above your experience. You’re not going to be okay with sitting at a desk, taking the occasional weekend to investigate something vaguely spooky or to pester the particularly malicious local psychics.

When you’re a hunter, you’re supposed to hunt.

So when your dead uncle sits down and tells you in his all-American drawl that your family needs you to come back, you’re probably going to go, because the thing that’s most out of place here is the life you’ve built yourself. You, the hunter, are the thing that doesn’t belong.

- 

The Connecticut house is the nicest they’ve ever lived in. It’s old, creaking floorboards and free-standing tub, and it is scaled small; many rooms, but each tiny in their perfect, Victorian way. Gwen has the turret, a little circular room that will probably be terribly cold come winter. Still, it’s her own.

“Gwen! Come on!” The door doesn’t lock, but Christian doesn’t force his way in, just yells from right outside. “Hurry up!”

She rolls her eyes, but sticks the kittens bookmark (her mother bought it) into her latest novel. “I’m coming,” she calls, and tosses the book down on the bed.

“You take forever.” That’s not true, Gwen’s boots have been on for the last fifteen minutes; it’s Christian who takes a long time to get ready. But since he was the one nagging her, for not being downstairs, for not being ready, right that instant, to go- well, then, it’s her fault. It’s always her fault.

She smiles a little too brightly as she brushes past her brother. They try to race down the stairs, but can’t, it’s too tight a fit. Their father is waiting in the driveway, leaning against his truck- always a truck, even when Momma drives a station wagon- looking displeased. “You two took your sweet time.”

“Sorry, Dad,” says Gwen, and beside her, Christian mumbles something. He doesn’t care, it’s just a formality.

“Monsters don’t wait for you to finish your beauty routine,” he says, but he isn’t angry, not exactly. He expects this from Gwen, and it hasn’t yet occurred to him that Christian could be a part of the problem.

They pile into the truck. Gwen stuck sitting bitch because she’s short and her legs don't get in the way, or maybe because she’s a girl- whatever. The drive is mostly country music and radio DJs. Dad turns it off during commercials, quizzing his children during the silence. “What kills a werewolf?” “Dead man’s blood only works on...?” “Here, take this napkin, draw me a Devil’s Trap.” “Translate this- yes, all of it, yes, on sight, you better be able to read Latin real quick when you’re on the hunt.” Standard car fare for the three of them.

“Long way to go for a training yard,” says Gwen. The car clock is broken but the sun is high by now. Dad seems to have run out of quizzes, if just for a moment, and the silence without the radio is quickly growing oppressive.

Dad glances at her, quick, considering. “Well. I suppose it would be if that's where we were headed. But today you’re going after a revenant.”

There’s a quiet moment in the truck, just the rumble of the road beneath the tires, and it goes on and on and-

“Really?” Christian's so excited, he’s practically salivating. “You’re sure?” he says, blushing even as the words leave his mouth. Of course Dad is sure, Dad is always sure.

“Of course I’m sure, I was up there yesterday. You kids want to tell me what you know about revenants, now?”

So goes the rest of the trip, just a long recitation of facts about the revenants, how they are different from other ghosts and spirits- mostly, they’re less dangerous, at least at first- what causes them, how to dispose of them. What sort of person he might have been. They pull off the road, in to a gas station parking lot. Gwen reviews the material while Christian pumps the gas. It’s simple enough; they know exactly who died: the mayor of his town, a well-respected church goer who gave to charity and kept his yard clear of leaves. “You know,” says Gwen to her father, “I’ll bet you anything that a man this squeaky-clean, with so much power and respect so young- he had something really nasty in his past.”

“Oh, really?” asks her father.

“Yeah. Normal people can afford to be seen as, like, imperfect, because if you dig deeper you see they’re not so bad. But people who do really lousy things- take bribes, embezzle, I don’t know, those are the sort of people who need to look really good in all the other parts of their lives. They’re the ones who seem perfect.” She hands the folder back; it just seems to be more of the same.

Christian climbs back into the truck, and their father passes the folder back to him. “Your sister just had a good observation, but she missed something that would tell you for certain that she’s right. Come on, Gwen, tell your brother what you just told me.”

So she repeats herself. “And, yeah, so that’s why I don’t think he can have been as wholesome apple pie as all these people make him out to be.”

Christian nods. Dad clears his throat. “Okay, but what about this particular case- the revenant case- tells you for sure that she’s right?”

Christian squirms a little, and Gwen tries not to enjoy the sight. Really, she doesn’t, because she’s already been told that she is right. Still, revenants, revenant lore- oh. Well, then, that's obvious.

“Only those who were, like, bad people- no, who did bad things in life, specifically, those who acted badly - they’re the only ones who come back as revenants.” And Dad is laughing, and reaching right past Gwen to clap Christian on the shoulder. It doesn’t matter that she thought of the same thing, at the same time, what matters is who said it first.

- 

Gwen hated Emma the summer she was sixteen. When she was twenty four, she reread it four times, then moved on to Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion. All those girls had problematic families. It was comforting, but there really wasn’t much that applied to her life. Hunting families in modern America have it a little different.

- 

Samuel holds the door open for her. It’s a shack, a place to squat. They apparently haven’t gotten around to doing things like picking up lamps or changing the burned out light bulbs, or maybe there’s just no power, because the darkness is overwhelming. “Hi, there,” she says. Two tall figures turn, and there are almost faces.

“Hi, there, yourself. Samuel?” inquires a deep voice.

“C’mere, Sam, meet your cousin,” says Samuel.

The deep voice belongs to the ridiculously tall figure, who apparently is a third cousin by her grandfather’s father’s brother’s daughter or something (he's Samuel's grandson, she can figure out how it works later) and now Gwen is distracted because the other, not quite so ridiculously tall man is Christian. He stands back.

It’s been two years since they even laid eyes on each other, five since they buried their father, and it feels like a lifetime since they last went on a hunt, side by side.

Two years.

“Hey,” says Christian. He’s smiling, sort of. He's grown some stubble, and his face is more weathered than she remembers. Maybe it’s just the shadows in the room that make him look worn.

“Hey, Chrissy,” she says, because he always hated that. He laughs, just a little, and she runs forward to throw an arm around him, dragging him into a hug. “You couldn’t be bothered to get me yourself?”

Christian doesn’t answer, but he hugs her back, so it’s going to be okay.

- 

It’s not like they had a fight. Maybe Gwen wasn’t that crazy about Arlene, but then, Arlene wasn’t that crazy about Gwen. They got on better over the years. 

Maybe two siblings can just turn out different. Christian was a hunter like their father, taking care of the wife at home, making sure she was safe and happy and didn’t need to hunt.

Gwen was a hunter like someone else. Gwen was a hunter like the knights in her childhood books would have been hunters. Gwen tried to be a hero; she was lone wolf; she was the star of her very own western.

So the wedding was gorgeous, and Gwen went and everyone was happy, and they called every few weeks and Gwen found them at Christmas, and... and. And that was it. Twenty-some years of training, fighting side by side, and it just went away, faded, because they’d never really had anything. They’d never really belonged. Pretty soon phone calls every few weeks turned into the occasional e-mail sent to fake accounts that were rarely checked, and a Christmas visit became a fifty-cent Christmas card, fake names and all.

(Emma Woodhouse never had this problem.)

- 

“Hi, Mrs. Ogilvey. We’re, uh, hello. I’m Jen, this is Chris, we’re, um, with the New Methodist Church Youth Group in, um, Ludlow, and we- we heard about your husband, and we thought we should send over a basket. I mean, um, our condolences, that is- we all admired him so much. Ma’am.” Gwen squirms, and glances over at Christian beside her. At least he has the friggin’ muffin basket to hold.

Their dad had dropped them off, and circled around the block to park out of line of sight; they’ve done this sort of thing before, but not alone.

Mrs. Ogilvey smiles at them, a forced look that doesn’t hold any sorrow at all. “Why, how thoughtful of you. Thank you. Won’t you come in?”

Sitting around an immaculate parlor, done in soft greens and warm yellows, Gwen has even less of a clue how to do this. Christian has apparently decided to be the strong silent type. It takes nearly fifteen minutes of painful, awkward conversation before Gwen can get the name of the cemetery out of her, and another ten before she can find an elegant (or, in this case, adequate) way to extricate them from the situation.

Eight hours later, the moon is low over the horizon. Christian, who never turns down the chance to sleep, is napping in a sleeping bag under the cap. Gwen sits up with her father, anxious to prove she’s grown enough to do this without catnaps. They're parked on a strip of gravel between the back edge of the graveyard and the woods that surrounds it.

“Thanks, Dad,” she says.

“Don’t thank me, you two haven’t even killed the damn thing yet.” But there’s pleasure under the gruffness.

Gwen pulls the windbreaker a little tighter around her, and wishes she’d thought to bring a proper jacket. “Yeah, well. Thanks for letting us try.”

“You’re getting to be a lady now. And your brother’s gonna need backup. He wants to hunt, you want to hunt, seems like it’s working out.”

“Yeah.”

“You two don’t have to stay with us forever, you know. Your Momma and I want to see you build your own lives someday.”

This is news. “Really, Dad?”

“Really. You find other hunters, even, stay with them. You know how to do the whole part: the research, the prep, all of that- you’re good at it, Gwen.”

Oh. Well, maybe not news. “Dad, I- I like the other parts, too. You know I practice, I’m a good shot.”

“Not like your brother.”

“Yeah, like Chrissy, Dad. I’m that good.”

He checks his watch. “One o’clock , should be late enough. Let’s go.” They hop out of the car, the bugs making a racket loud enough to cover three midnight grave robbers.

Gwen bangs lightly on the window of the cap. “Oy, let’s move.” For all that he loves sleep, Christian is fast to wake up, and he’s out of the back in less than a minute, shotgun in one hand and shovel in the other. The grass is wet beneath their feet.

“This is gross,” complains Christian somewhere in the second hour of digging. Gwen would agree, but there’s no point, not when they’re so close. Who decided that it had to be six feet, anyways? A stupid way to dispose of bodies. They spend ten minutes just trying to open the casket, and are confronted with an old man with droopy jowls. “Come on, ugly, let’s get rid of you.”

The salt, a small can of lighter fluid and a box of safety matches are stowed in Gwen’s backpack. The first step is easy, distributing the salt evenly. The second step is to lightly douse the body, which seems fine. The third is to light the body on fire, which is where it all goes to hell. Christian had managed to squirt just a little too liberally, and when Gwen drops the match, the flames jump straight up. Christian’s sneakers catch almost immediately. A few drops of lighter fluid must have landed on Gwen’s pants, because next thing she knows she’s on fire, and both she and Christian are rolling around like idiots next to a burning open grave at three in the morning.

(Being a knight would have been so much cooler.)

Ten minutes later they’ve put out all the fires they need to. Dad is a firm believer in trying to cover up the evidence, so now they get to put back all the dirt they moved- a task that takes less actual effort, but even more time. They’re just pulling away from the graveyard as the sun breaks into the sky.

Dad gets them a motel room, where they take turns showering and cleaning their burns. It’s nothing major, though both of them are in pain enough to remind them to be careful in the future.

When she finally lays down Gwen passes out completely.

- 

This one time in Alaska, they’re trying to bring down a particularly nasty water spirit. A friend down in Omaha is sure the best method is burning. Christian goes in all ready to burn down the whole lake, only to discover that he doesn’t have anything flammable enough to catch. Gwen offers up a bottle of cooking oil, which doesn’t quite do it.

He blows up at her for three full hours. At the end, they’ve revisited every single hunt they went on before Gwen was nineteen, including that pathetic first attempt with the first-degree burns.

That Christian still thinks carrying lighter fluid is a good idea astounds her sometimes.

The water spirit gets away.

- 

The ghost of the old woman is still choking Christian, and he’s slowing down, there’s only so much he can- she fumbles in her bag but she’s out of salt.

There it is.

A hard twist and the top is off, tumbling with a clatter to the ground. She dumps the whole bottle into the pit, onto the body. The first match goes out, the second doesn’t light, and the third-

She throws herself over Christian, now unconscious (dead? she can’t tell) on the filthy ground, as the room explodes behind her. The walls turn bright orange and then white and then she can’t see anything because of the stars in her vision. She pulls the handkerchief out of Christian’s pocket to cover his mouth, pulls her t-shirt up over her own face.

The flames die quickly, but the oxygen dies along with it. She’s gasping for air, trying to ignore the smoke in her lungs as she drags Christian up the stairs, the same direction the smoke is going, but there’s fresh air up there. The blast must have woken him up, because he’s trying to say something.

“Shut up,” snaps Gwen.

Christian reaches for the banister. He pulls himself up; the pole comes half-way out of the wall, but Christian is standing and they can move, can get out of here. She has her gun to hand, and her bag is easy to grab, but Christian’s shotgun is half-engulfed in flames. Even if she could get to it she couldn’t pick it up. They stagger up the stairs together, leaving half of their tools behind to be destroyed.

The thing about illegally sneaking into an abandoned building and then causing a major, destructive explosion in the cellar is that you really can’t go in for medical attention immediately afterwards. Cops are stupid about ghosts, but awfully smart about arsonists. They stand for a little while, just stand breathing in clean air. Gwen’s pretty sure she doesn’t have any serious burns on her face or hands, and Christian came through with only some bruising.

“I told you-” he’s leaning against the truck, struggling a little to get his earplugs out. “That the kerosene... was a good- a good compromise.”

Gwen rolls her eyes and takes the keys from his pocket.

West Texas spreads out behind them as they tear away from the building, smoke still leaking out the side.

- 

Fire is problematic. Fire has a tendency to not work when you need it to, and to work too well the rest of the time. When you've worked with fire enough, you realize it is not the ideal method of destroying anything.

A gun is better, though you have to be awfully careful.

(Gwen's still holding out for a sword.)

- 

They spend a while just hunting together. Hotel rooms and abandoned buildings for four full-time hunters are a little more intense than for a pair, and they spend half their time trying not to upset the locals. In other ways, it's great: constant backup for jobs, someone around to play the outsider, and the cons and scams you can do with four people are unbelievable.

She’s glad to be working with Christian again. Sort of. Samuel is an amazing man, more driven than anyone she’s ever met (this side of crazy). And Sam... he gives her the creeps, but he’s good.

  
They're taking time off after a really nasty run in with a werewolf (five days after the full moon) and aren’t about to move forward yet. She’s sitting in a chain dinner, holding a table by ordering cup after cup of coffee.

Sam is the first of the guys to arrive. “What are you reading?” he asks, as if the sight of Gwen with a paperback is some sort of puzzle he needs to solve.

She holds it up. Travels With Charley isn’t a long book, but she’s been reading slow, barely thirty pages in.

Sam smiles. Sort of. “Oh, yeah. I did a course on American Lit in college, and I read that as my Steinbeck assignment. I didn’t like it.”

“Why?”

“It was too much like what growing up on the road was like. Plus, I always wanted a dog."

“It’s different when you’re only moving every few months or years,” says Gwen. She didn’t have anything quite like this until Christian was nineteen and ready to get away from their folks.

“We never had a house.”

And if Gwen thought she was uncomfortable to be back on the road, living without roots, maybe Sam had it worse yet. Or maybe he didn’t, maybe this really was familiar to him, just like meeting actors in small towns was comfortable to Steinbeck, because Sam sure didn’t seem to have a problem with it.

Still, she was grateful the next day when Samuel called them all in for a meeting. “I found someone,” he announces, like it’s a big deal. “And better than that, I found somewhere. Get yourselves packed; we’re done with this.”

They build a compound out of a few buildings that their new-found cousin Mark owns, but even Sam doesn’t see the point in getting a poodle. They're hunters, living life like hunters live, and it's almost exactly what she thought she wanted.

- 

New York was a different sort of place. She moved on a whim, after more than three years of hunting on her own, because sometimes... sometimes people change. They get tired. Hunters can die young, and Gwen told everyone who asked that she just wanted to live a little first.

Maybe it was about that. Maybe it was the memory of the pushy bookstore clerk who first sold her on Melville. Maybe it was just to see if she could live like a normal city-dweller, the creature she hardly ever got to see but now got to be. Gwen had always been book-smart. A few online courses and she had enough of the manner, and the swagger, to fake a truly impressive career as an executive assistant. The law firm she worked for, and the partner she worked with, showered her with praise and attention to keep her happy and with them. It was quiet.

It beat credit card scans and simple cons.

The city was good to her. She had a very normal man named Jake, from Wichita. A very normal cubbyhole of an apartment. A very normal commute. And an incredibly normal wardrobe- she even learned to wear heels every day, not just when working a con. It was a revelation.

Her mother was in Wisconsin. Gwen saw her at Christmas a couple of times, before she moved to California, to a nice suburban community of retirees. Gwen's busy pretending to have a normal life, no crime and no drama, and her mother's doing the same, which gives them less in common than anyone would expect.

She made friends, after a fashion, and when one of them asked on Mojito night for a word to describe her life, the only answer she could think of was ‘bland’.

Even Jake was bland, and when he left her for the woman he met at the gym, she hardly noticed his absence.

Hunting again should be a relief.

- 

“What do you think he’s doing in there?”

Sam shrugs. Mark, always mysterious, watches her carefully. Their cousin David is lurking in the doorway, eavesdropping without bothering to be subtle.

The only downside to the permanent compound is that it’s completely disgusting. The floor is dirty concrete, and the ceiling looks like it misses the cobwebs desperately. It’s no wonder that Mark was willing to pass it on to the family business.

Mark is an odd duck, and that’s a fact. Gwen is more than a little curious about him. They’d met as kids, once. His folks had known about hunting, but weren’t like Gwen and Christian’s father.

Lucky kid.

Mark is still watching her. “We could ask him.”

“You wanna quiz Samuel? Be my guest,” she snaps, harsher than she means to.

In the hallways David laughs quietly to himself. Gwen seethes a little more.

“Doesn’t have to be all up in his face, Gwen. We could just let him know that we think something’s up, and that if he ever wants to share, we’d like to hear. Nice and polite.”

Sam doesn’t say a word, just watches the exchange.

“You ever hear of insubordination? ‘Cause Samuel would just say mutiny; it’s quicker on the tongue.” But he’s right, she really does want to know what she's involved in. It's part of the law that James Campbell taught and followed: know what you’re about and don’t lose your head.

“He won’t listen. He’ll hear you out, and he’ll pat you kids on the head.” David hooks a hand around the metal doorframe, scratching the paint with his finger. “And then you’ll be sent on your way. This family doesn’t run on back-talk.”

“Thanks,” says Gwen. Mark looks at her, and it’s settled; this family may not put up with back talk, but it also doesn’t have much room for condescension like that.

David doesn’t go with them when they go to talk to Samuel. Sam clearly doesn’t care. Johnny’s too much of an ass to be asked, and Christian has been even more distant from his sister than he was when they were young. Half the time she doesn’t even remember that they’re siblings; he blends in so well with the other cousins.

“Hey, Samuel, you got a minute?” She throws it out nonchalant, but it’s clear he’s heading into his office for the evening.

He gives her a stern once-over before asking her in. “Course, honey, I’ve got the time. C’mon in.”

Mark follows. The light is actually worse in Samuel’s office, and she doesn’t know why he bothers having the place at all. Part of her wants to clean it all up a little, just so that she doesn’t have to live and work in such a depressing place, but more than that she wants to be an actual, useful part of the team. Taking on domestic chores is the shortcut to being sidelined. Samuel’s fond of her, but he doesn’t always trust her judgment.

“So, what do you kids need?”

She clears her throat. “Is something big going down? I know you aren’t keeping trouble from us for anything less than a good reason, I just- wanted you to know that we know something is up.”

“You know that.”

“Yes, sir. And we want you to know that whatever it is, if you need us, we’re in.”

Mark shifts uncomfortably beside her, because this was never what they talked about. Well, if he wants his opinions to be heard, maybe he should open his own god-damn mouth.

The desk chair creaks while Samuel sits, settles in. He doesn’t register anger, or fear, or anything. He just keeps his eyes on hers, and she is reminded again that dead men may know a little bit more than the rest of humanity about some things. He shakes his head, sighs, finally relaxes. “Well, then. Thank you, Gwen. You two have a good night.”

Mark waits until the door is closed behind them to turn on her. “That was it? That’s all you have to say to him?”

She doesn’t dignify this with a response, because she doesn’t have one. Samuel knows that they are on to him, to his secrets. Information will have to come on his terms.

The next day Samuel announces the new plan: take prisoners until they can learn exactly what’s going on, why the rules are changing. He’s even got a place set up off site nearby. Convenient, that.

Gwen mostly hunts on her own. They start going farther without each other, and she's not sure of the reason- but she's grateful.

- 

The day after her first hunt, Gwen wakes up in late afternoon.

“Hey, there.” Dad is keeping watch, sitting in a chair and watching his children sleep. “You were out for a while.”

“Mmm.” Unlike Christian, she hasn’t yet got the hang of popping out of bed and going into overdrive. “What’s new?”

“Not that much, honey. I’ll make some coffee. Maybe you can do a dinner run before your brother wakes up.”

Gwen shrugs, and pads into the bathroom, grabbing the fresh set of clothes she’d brought. Dinner makes as much sense as anything.

Not only does she get that cup of coffee, she and her father are halfway through the ‘spicy bean curd’ from the Chinese restaurant down the street before Christian even shows signs of stirring. He’s up fast, and in the proud tradition of 14-year-old boys everywhere manages to eat the entire Kung pow chicken by himself, plus a few egg rolls and a box of rice.

“Are we heading back tonight?”

Dad gives them both a long look. “No. We’re staying here for a few days, just to be sure. Your Momma packed your emergency overnights, they’re behind the seats. Chrissy, you should go get them.”

“But-”

“But?” The thing about Dad is that he’s careful. He doesn’t make his kids live in fear of the things that are out there, though they all know the dangers. He doesn’t make stupid mistakes, and Gwen is willing to bet that he doesn’t let his kids go hunting without planning the whole thing out pretty damn carefully. “But you’re gonna go get those bags now, Christian.” He turns to Gwen, much more pleasant. “I think your Momma even threw in one of your books. We’ll just be killing time for a little while.”

That night and the next day passed in the most interminably boring manner possible. Their father had left them behind when he went hunting, at least while they were little, and Momma always had a sixth sense about what could keep the children entertained in strange towns. But they’re hunters, lying low and monitoring the situation, and that means eating breakfast out and asking the waitress for gossip, checking the local paper.

Days pass.

One afternoon Gwen settles herself with her favorite novel in the middle of the town square, by the courthouse. Three people come by, two to ask her for change, which she gives, though she asks them for ghost stories. The last is a business man waiting for a bus, looking out of place in a quaint town.

“What’re you reading? Looks exciting.”

She goes on for a little while about Alanna’s marvelous adventures, the way death isn’t always permanent. “It’s why I like this town,” she adds, clearly an afterthought. “You heard that story about the mayor who died, and then he was seen all around town?”

“You’re just another local trying to scare me,” the man laughs, but he looks uncomfortable.

Gwen widens her eyes. “No, sir! I’m only here for a few weeks myself, visiting with family. Besides, I haven’t heard about it in a few days. Makes me sad, that he’s gone.”

“Oh, don’t be so sure about that, Miss. I heard that they saw his face in the window of a diner just this morning.” A bus pulls up alongside the curb, hydraulics hissing and creaking. “You have a good day.”

“Wait!” The book falls to the ground, getting a little muddy from the rain the day before. “Ah, where’d you hear this?”

He indicates the diner just down the street, and Gwen smiles and waves her thanks. She grabs the novel- an unfortunate casualty of the job- and starts towards ‘Jenna’s Eatery’, making quick work of the jog. A waitress there isn’t willing to say much until Gwen gets a cup of coffee and a sandwich, but it’s the off hours in the afternoon, and eventually she’s willing to say what her co-worker saw that morning. “She said she wasn’t sure it was him, but she thought so. Isn’t it freaky?”

Gwen agrees. It is freaky, very freaky.

- 

The Christmas Gwen was twelve was the coldest she ever knew (south of Alaska). It was dark, too. Her mother decided that she wasn’t working hard enough. Family business isn’t always easy to get in to. “If you really want to do this, you’ll learn to research.”

What she really wanted was a beautiful palomino mare, but what she got was a book on bizarre animal deaths in the Americas. It was interesting enough, and by her thirteenth birthday she was probably Denver’s expert on animal exsanguinations by natural and supernatural means.

- 

Most hunters die young. Some die tragically young; others just never make it to retirement. A few, the conservative and the lucky, make it to old age, and spend their twilight years cowering in fear of the things they no longer fight.

Violet Campbell is not like them. She is wise, in her quiet, simple way. She is not and has never been a hunter. She met James when he was on a hunt in her area. They hit it off, and when he came back for her three years later, he told her everything. Then he asked her to marry him.

She’s never wondered why she said yes.

So she’s old, now, for a hunter’s wife. She’s pushing fifty. And she still packs his bags and cleans his knives and makes sure that James has what he needs, so he can keep them happy and keep them safe.

Two kids and they turned out alright. Gwen's still a little moody, but she's doing what she wants to and won't hear anything her mother has to say, anyways. Christian's off on his honeymoon, with that nice Arlene. They're really not Violet's concern anymore (finally).

They’re in Florida because why not. There’re things to hunt, and there’s things to do. James had found a curse on a part of the wetlands that was luring in kids, and some adults who should have known better. Now they’ve nowhere to be. They rent a condo for the season, hang around. Violet scans the papers, looking for new cases, something to keep James busy when he’s not conning his way into their living. (She’ll never tell him about the odd jobs she takes, the occasional con or scam she runs when they can afford the time and the attention. He works so hard, for her and for the rest of the world.)

- 

Gwen assumes that her mother exists solely to be the support to her loving husband. This is not, strictly speaking, true. It is certainly not true the way Gwen sees it.

But Gwen is twenty-eight when the news comes that her father has been found. Exsanguinated, completely, with little circles gone from his head. They’ve burned the body already, of course; a hunter’s funeral isn’t much of a social event. She’s been on the road, on her own, for twenty-two months.

“Hey, Momma,” she says, and folds her mother into a giant hug. Florida is sticky and nasty, even this time of year. Maybe when she’s eighty she’ll understand the appeal.

Her mother just leans into her and cries, and cries. They’re outside on the porch; Momma and Dad had found a little house, almost bare of paint and with some questionable structure. It rented for a song in the northern part of the state. The floorboards give and groan, letting Gwen know that Christian is coming even before she sees him standing in the doorway, watching. Arlene stands behind him.

Christian smiles at her for a moment. She’s just as glad to see him, in truth. Losing family reminds you how much you value what you have. “Hey, Chris.”

They go in, Momma trying her best to pretend that she can function, that everything is going to be okay. They take turns puttering around the kitchen. Arlene makes a good new daughter-in-law, though she’s only met Violet a few times. Mostly Gwen stands and watches awkwardly.

“How long are you going to stay for?” Christian asks Gwen, when exhaustion has claimed their mother and Arlene is making dinner.

“I don’t know yet. For a while, I guess. What do you think she’s going to do?”

“I don’t know. She’s got some family in Madison, remember? Maybe she can head out there.”

“Maybe.”

“What, you’re going to stay, look after her?”

“Why not?” There are a thousand reasons why not. Gwen knows this. But the derision in his voice stings, and she’s not about to give in to it. “She needs some time, that’s all. We don’t have to ship her out to Wisconsin if she doesn’t want to go.”

Christian unloads Dad’s guns from his lock-box in lieu of a response. He starts taking them apart, cleaning them. Gwen picks one up, starts to help as well, because what else is there. She watches him work, so calm, so at peace with what he’s doing. “Chris?”

“What?”

“What do you think got Dad?”

“Something he was hunting.”

“It was a chupacabra.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m still your big sister and I still know about some things, Christian. I haven’t forgotten how to spot a beast in the last two years.”

Christian doesn’t say anything.

 -

Samuel takes Gwen hunting with him, some of the time, at least when he's not off on secret missions with his grandson. It’s fine; Christian and Mark seem to have a good thing going on, the ability to watch each other’s backs without question or doubt. Johnny’s fine alone, and David is an asshole who will hopefully get himself killed some day.

The road trips get long sometimes. They talk, pass the time. Gwen’s good with Samuel, as good as any of them; she’s happy to explain digital TV or DVDs and what, exactly, the point of e-mail is. She warns him about the trace on cell phones, showing him how to take a battery out so it can’t be tracked.

“That’ll destroy the battery and the phone if you do it enough, though. So it’s better to just keep getting cheap phones; that way it doesn’t matter when you have to get a new one every six months, and it doesn’t hurt so much to have to change numbers.” She pops the cover back on, and hands the phone back over to him.

He looks at it, and looks at her. Ohio is going to be flat and straight for a while and the road is near empty. “How do you know so much about this stuff, girl?”

She shrugs. “Same way anyone does. I pay attention. I listen to the paranoid people online. I try to keep up. Christian hates it, but I don’t know- it’s not so bad. As long as you know what’s going on, you can make your own future, I guess.”

“Christian. What happened with you two? You have a fight?”

Ah. “Kind of.”

“Kind of? What kind of an answer is that?” She lets it sit for a while, maybe too long, because he’s after her again. “I’m your uncle, girl, and more than that, I’m in charge of making sure this family works out okay. And you don’t seem any closer to your brother than you are to your cousins, and that’s not saying much.”

It’s not entirely true. When the boys go out drinking Gwen’s there with the best of them. She’s being doing tequila shots since she was eighteen, whiskey since nineteen. She hangs out, she chats, she’s one of the boys, except she’s not quite. They’ve got a few women working with them, but mostly those ladies are like Arlene- support, not hunters. They aren’t friends. Which still leaves the question of why Gwen and her brother aren’t more filial.

“We went on a hunt. We didn’t finish it right. Then, he was gonna marry Arlene, and it just seemed like time to take a break, work alone for a while. I’d been on my own for a couple years when I was younger, so I did that. Didn’t seem like a problem. Then Dad died and we never got back together.”

“So you quit.”

“I got tired of it, Samuel. I just wanted something else for a while.” He’s waiting for something more, so she adds: “I’m glad to be back.”

“Good. I’m glad we’ve got you here.”

-

Two for the road works well enough sometimes. Other times they split up for a little while. It’s just easier, if one of them stays in town, does research from the base while the other checks out a lead. Sometimes they split just because they want to, like now, in Arkansas. Christian’s down in Magnolia, of all places, and she’s still following up in Camden, checking the news and looking for any sign that the last case they settled didn’t settle entirely. 

“When the Saints Come Marching In” hollers out from her jacket pocket. Christian’s idea. “Hey, Chris.”

“Hey, I found some weird stuff. Might be a coyote, might not. You want to ask at city hall, ask about animal deaths, local farms-”

“Got it.” She reaches in her pocket for change even as they’re talking. “What time frame are we looking at?”

“Last two, two and a half months down here. I don’t know what we’re looking for, so anything from the surrounding counties-”

“Yeah.” It’s easier just to leave a twenty. She starts out, motioning to the older woman who seems to be the only employee that the money’s on the table. “Anything else?”

“Round bites. Lots of them. I’m trying to get eyes on a carcass it’s killed, because eyewitness sightings are all crazy, not matching. I’ll call you when I’ve got more.”

“Text. Reception is crap out here.” Arkansas is like that.

"Dad says you need to....." Christian fades out for a moment into static and then silence. She walks quickly, on the off chance that reception is better down the street. "You got that?"

Twenty-six year olds don't need instruction from their fathers. "Yeah, sure, talk to you later."

She snaps the phone shut. City hall is two miles away, and it’s going to be a long, very hot walk.

-

There have been a few animal killings that might match what Christian saw. It’s hard to tell, though; so often farm animals get killed by dogs and by cats, foxes, and in the past few years even eastern coyotes are a problem again. She knows that lots of things out there are hungry. 

The thing is- it’s not a clear pattern. The signal to noise ratio is impossible.

When she was seventeen she did a few community college classes, for high school credit, and ended up studying radio science, the ability to take pure information and translate it back into meaning, into communication. So much of hunting is about that. The signal, the pattern, is hidden by nonsense information. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, and exactly where, you can’t find anything, because there’s so much that you can’t filter because it might actually be the very object of your search.

There are a thousand other ways to look at it. A jigsaw puzzle where half the pieces in the box belong to other pictures, and you've only got 3/4 of the right pieces, anyways. A test where half the questions only offer wrong answers. Still, Gwen prefers her own metaphor, because it says that somewhere out there, there is something to be understood. If you look hard enough you can find the meaning in the noise.

-

Mr. Andrews is the electrical engineering teacher at the community college. He has a big nose and a great smile, and for someone who spent his days teaching precocious children and reformed degenerates he has a pretty good attitude. Gwen has developed a habit of hanging around after her afternoon class with him, just to chat.

“So, what do you want to do with your life? I know you’re doing well in this class, but you don’t love it.”

It’s true. “Well, you’re a good teacher. It’s easy to be a good student.”

He laughs it off, and tells her that they need to clear out of the room before the next class gets in. They finish the conversation in the hall.

“I don’t really know. Be... have adventures. Help people. Make the world a safer place to live. Travel. See things. Do things.”

“Army? Peace corps?” He looks her over. “Well, if the army takes girls as tiny as you. You’re young, you might still get a growth spurt.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t do so well with people like that.”

“There’s not much room for a lone hero these days, Gwen. You could try for the police academy when you get your degree, or do the paramedic program here. It’s a lot of school, but you’d like it, I think.”

It takes Gwen a few weeks to realize what it is that bothers her so much about his advice. She avoids him, doesn’t stay as long after class, shows up exactly on time. It’s just that he’s right, is all. The only heroes the world needs, or thinks it needs, are the kinds of people who can work together, who can put aside themselves and refrain from always, always speaking their minds. And when the semester is over, and her family moves on, she doesn’t re-enroll. It’s easy enough to convince a high school back in California that she graduated, and her father accepts her as back up and an extra pair of hands to do work.

She remembers Mr. Andrews, though. She remembers how radios work and how to set up an antenna. It’s amazing how useful all that random knowledge is. Sometimes she considers writing him, saying thanks, but it wouldn’t be worth it.

-

She’s got all her cases laid out, from Ouchita County and from Calhoun, the next county over. She'll the cases from all of Arkansas if she has to. Christian’s running late, again. He probably forgot to call Arlene, again. That always leads to a desperate phone call from a truck stop (all these years and cell phones are crap in the country- they’re almost not worth having.) If there is a thing out there, it’s been hitting more frequently, and has some sort of territory, and maybe, if Gwen’s right, prefers the blood of livestock.

The shuffling at the door tells her that Christian has (finally) made it back. She grabs for her handgun anyways; there’s no gain in being stupid.

“Sorry I’m late,” are Christian’s first words. “I brought McDonald’s.”

They catch up quickly enough over terrible burgers. Christian’s data doesn’t quite match, but he’s not as good at patterns as she is. “Here, let me see what you’ve got,” she says finally, and spreads it out to cover her entire bed. It’s not bad. He missed a few things, probably, filtered out the good information with the bad, but there’s no reason to think she hasn’t done the same.

An hour later they’ve got an MO. “So, this thing, it kills livestock. It really likes goats, sheep, but it’ll do cattle if it can, especially calves. Not such a fan of chickens, until-” Gwen holds up her notepad, pleased with herself “until four weeks ago, when the number of chickens went up dramatically, and the livestock went down. It was running a bigger range at first, and then got smaller and smaller, but since the chicken thing it’s been slowly... taking more places.”

“So, it’s territorial. And we know its base,” says Christian. He’s glancing at his phone, as if it holds some secret.

“Yeah. Well, I don’t know. The thing is... I don’t know of anything that might be like this. I mean, the territorial thing is really throwing me. How can it keep up this rate of killings without getting shot?”

“It’s not scared of dogs. It’s smart.”

Gwen flops down onto the bed, scattering evidence. “This isn’t it being smart, Christian.”

“Well, then, what is it?”

“Maybe this is, I don’t know, some kind of special thing. A phase.”

“Then we’re back to square one. You can’t ID this thing off of a phase it might be going through.” And, as little as she likes to hear it, that’s the truth. It’s dark out now, and it’s been a long few days for the both of them. Arkansas wasn’t supposed to be this exciting.

“I’ll call,” says Christian. Maybe he’s just eager to use that phone.

Dad doesn’t have anything, and he’s busy with his own hunt, but Momma says she’s been saving clippings about a chupacabra in Texas. Gwen ends up taking the phone away then, because that's just a ridiculous claim. The fight is short and to the point. After a few minutes more of pleasantries, she hangs up and looks at Christian. 

“Well, least for now, we’re hunting a chupacabra.”

-

The ground is still frozen when Samuel sends out Gwen, Christian and Mark to clear up a haunted theme park. Samuel tells them to take their time, get to know each other a little, since the hunting family is so new to them. Gwen is grateful for that, because it saves them from explaining why they take a full month in Pennsylvania, trying to follow up on leads from their cousin David's contact.

Most of the leads they find are false. Some are real, and that's when Gwen learns that ghosts are infinitely scarier when they are possessing oversized animatronic characters from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. (Despite all the jokes, it's not the ghost of Mr. Rogers they're putting to rest, but a disgruntled employee from years before. Gwen is privately relieved.)

After months of hunting as a team (family, whatever) they still haven't all gotten used to each other's habits, entirely, which causes a few bumps in the road.

"So, now we've zapped this ghost, and you guys want to hang around because...?"

Gwen looks at her brother. Christian looks at his boots. "Because, family policy. If you can, you stick around for a few days, just to make sure you dealt with the problem."

"What if you've made trouble with the law, or your cover-story says you need to hit the road?"

She sighs. "Then you go, Mark! Or you go lay low in the next town over. I just don't want to find out that we missed a collection of this guy's fingernails, or something, and he's gone on to kill a trolley full of school kids!"

Christian is clearly biting back a grin; the whole case has been hard to take seriously. Something about fighting children's TV show characters. "No offense, Gwen, but I think we got it this time. He's not coming back, and we might as well clear out before we attract any more attention."

And yeah, there was that one incident at the bar when Mark had had a few more than he should and Gwen just felt like stirring up trouble, plus she'd been busted for trespassing three times and had to make up an identity as a registered sex offender (which is harder to fake than you might think) and the thing with the single mother who ran the 'Splash Zone' section of the amusment park and desperately wanted Christian's number... So maybe it was time to go to ground, and only come back in a week or so, to do a final sweep. Still, they have a policy, Gwen and Christian, and they know what happens when you don't keep an eye on what you've done.

"I can't believe you're against me on this, Christian." 

"Gwen, come on. I haven't seen my wife in over a month. I'm tired, I've been fighting the weirdest shit I can imagine- let's go home." He holds out a hand to her.

She looks around the motel room and realizes that both men have already packed, for the most part. It's two against one.

"You called it, little brother. Whatever happens after now is on your shoulders."

It's not quite true. Even back at the compound, she can't get through hugging her uncle hello before she tells him that he needs to have someone drop by and double-check, next time they're in the Pittsburgh area. Samuel thinks she's strange, but agrees anyways.

They're a family made up of compromises, apparently.

-

Gwen spends nearly two years hunting on her lonesome, when she's young, but she checks in with her folks. They're not thrilled that she is always elsewhere. She’s meeting up with the family for Christmas, a warm, southern celebration without any snow. Christian still hunts with Dad.

“So when are you going to come home, hunt with us again?”

“You don’t need three hunters in one car. That’s overkill. More likely to cause problems with the locals,” she counters.

“Besides,” their father adds, “I’m about done with you both.”

They go out on Christmas Eve for some shooting fun. It's an old tradition, left over from when they'd spend the occasional holiday with hunters, eating too much and relaxing in company. Dad’s brother comes down to town for the afternoon, lugging shotguns and even carbines that Gwen’s never handled before. He’s got something else in a box, passes it off to their father before the day’s out.

Dad presents the box to Christian with great ceremony. Christian opens it and almost starts crying. The real deal, which this gun surely is, is damn hard for civilians to get, and getting caught with this could cause him all sorts of law problems. That makes it more precious.

Christian's new M4 has a lovely report. Twilight comes before they finish with it.

Gwen and Christian take off the day after Christmas to chase a ghost in California.

-

The waitress who saw the ‘freaky’ revenant in small-town Vermont still confirms her story the next day, when Gwen and her father go to ask some more about it. He does most of the talking, as if to remind his daughter that she’s still in training, that she’s not really a hunter yet. Christian returns to the widow’s house, again under the auspices of the church youth group, and asks her directly about the rumors. She grows angry and throws him out, but she admits to having seen him, just for a moment, leaving the house when Christian shows up.

“So what’s going on?”

They take lunch outside, because a family can only spend so many days together inside a hotel room before their heads explode. Teenagers are even worse than adults about that. Christian and Gwen are splitting a pizza, but their father is sitting back, still watching.

Her brother wipes a hand across his face, catching strings of mozzarella. “I dunno. Think we missed something?”

“Like what? We burned that entire thing up, we almost burned us up, there’s no way the body didn’t get finished off.” She snags another piece of pepperoni before Christian can get it; left to his own devices he’d eat the entire pie.

“I don’t know, Gwen!”

“Well, you don’t have to yell about it.”

Their father clears his throat. “That’s enough, children.” The epithet is all it takes to have Gwen shaking, quiet and ashamed, and Christian is looking down as well. “Think it through. You’re hunters, so what do you do now?”

Christian answers first. “We go back to the beginning and consider what we missed, and hunt it over again if we have to.”

They review the things they know. Mrs. Ogilvey is a traditionalist, and she doesn’t believe in taking mementos from the dead. “You’re sure? You checked? No, lover’s tokens or anything?” As soon as the words are out of her mouth she turns red. Christian and her father stare.

It’s her father who finds the words first. “Girl, you need to read less. You’re getting strange ideas.”

The only good thing they can come up with is that the revenant seems to be pretty harmless, the past few days. He hasn’t been holding conversations, or sticking around long, or doing anything particularly threatening, anything that would suggest that violence is forthcoming.

“I wonder why,” mused Christian.

“Maybe we scared it.”

“No room for maybes, you two. Check the books; I’ve got some in the car.” Sure enough, he had brought everything in the family library they had that touched on revenants. Gwen is impressed with how well this test had been planned. They even get a list of phone numbers, hunters and experts their father has worked with before who might be willing to do a favor or look something up for a pair of kids.

They keep looking, staying up all night (again) but at least this time they’re indoors, and nothing catches fire. Gwen reads every reference to revenants twice, Christian looks them all over at least once, and then they start reviewing the more general stuff on ghosts and spirits. If thoroughness is the answer Gwen would like to know the question.

“Wait... what was...” She takes the old journal from Marcus Campbell, one of the family who had come over at around the time of the revolutionary war, and starts going through it again. Marcus seems to know a lot about revenants, had killed more than a few, but wasn’t always good at distinguishing them from other spirits. This proved a bit of a problem, because they are special, different from a standard ghost in more than a couple ways. “Different.”

“What, sis?”

“They- I don’t know. Revenants are supposed to be different, right?”

“Yeah, sure, they’ve got a totally different MO from ordinary ghosts. Almost the same in some ways, but really specific. What is this, a pop quiz?”

“And- and you kill them almost the same, but different.”

“Eh, as long as you’ve destroyed the body.” Christian is past the point where he has energy to argue or be funny, and has moved straight on to the tired, droopy, uncooperative stage.

Gwen eyes him critically. “Are you sure of that?”

“No. I’m just guessing, Gwen, fuck!”

“Language!” Their father is back, firm and angry and finally taking part in the conversation. “Christian, listen to your sister, because she’s got it.”

“She’s got it?”

“Really, Dad?” They speak almost simultaneously, Gwen only hesitating because she can’t quite believe that he’s actually agreeing with her over her brother.

He stands, looming ominously over the table. “You kill a revenant by cutting off its head and washing it with holy water, and taking out the heart. Then you can burn everything.” And they’ve read past a dozen allusions to this, but since burning is usually mentioned, she didn’t notice, wasn’t looking hard enough- “Which you two, in case you have forgotten, neglected to do. Now you’ve got a weak little spirit that’s not quite here but still can’t let go. If you’re lucky- if I’m right- this thing is going to hang around, make a nuisance of itself for some weeks or months or years, and eventually as the decades pass fade into a ghost story.

“Which means you got lucky. It could have been a lot worse. You went in under-prepared. You didn’t think through exactly what you were doing, and now there’s no way we know of to get rid of this thing. Could try exorcising it, maybe, or laying wards against angry spirits. Might work, might not.”

Christian looks shocked. Gwen has moved on to mortification. It’s- he’s probably known the whole time. He’s just standing there, looking very tall and imposing, clean-shaven face of experience and wisdom. He’s kept them up all night, twice now, as a part of an impossible test that they have failed, miserably.

“You go in without knowing what you’re doing and you lose your head. You lose your head and you lose the hunt. You lose the hunt and who knows what the hell will happen. So know what you’re about and don’t lose your head, you hear?”

-

It’s not that Gwen thinks her father’s death is her fault. It’s that she knows that the thing that killed him is only alive because his children couldn’t heed his advice.

-

Fourteen is when the glamour of knighthood started to fade for Gwen.

They're sitting in a roadhouse in Nebraska, in THE Roadhouse. Gwen likes this place; her Dad started insisting they stop there, and then Momma decided she liked Mrs. Harvelle and now they come all the time, whenever the whole family is traveling. Two years earlier they'd made an extra three hundred mile trip just to go there, when they were moving away from Denver. Sometimes Mrs. Harvelle asks Gwen to babysit, but she pays well, which is fine- plus it gets Gwen off the hook for watching Christian.

Normally these trips are pretty fun, especially the one time on the fourth of July when Dad and Mr. Harvelle decided they were going to barbeque an entire pig. There are sometimes other hunters around, and they don't talk about it much, but they treat Gwen like she's special. Like she knows what's up.

This time no one is smiling. 

Jo's not here, not even in the back. The sun's beating down outside, across the plain, so maybe she's still at day camp. The sign out front says 'CLOSED'. Inside there are a dozen people, mostly men, some of them hunters Gwen recognizes. They all have beer or something stronger. The jukebox is quiet.

She's got a book in hand, but it's hard to read like this.

Christian kicks at the table leg. Gwen puts out a hand to still him. He just glares and kicks again. 

"Christian, come outside," says Momma, stilling her son with a single touch. "Gwen, why don't you go see how Mrs. Harvelle is doing?"

She's glad for the opportunity to get out of there, without being assigned to guarding her brother. She's glad enough that she doesn't mind being sent back to the kitchen for dish-washing or whatever else Mrs. Harvelle will decide she's supposed to do.

It's a little noisier in the back. Danny, the guy who works there, is dragging a case of liquor up from the basement. Mrs. Harvelle is stirring something, and checking the oven, and talking on the phone all at the same time. She sets down the bowl so she can hang up the phone. "Did you need something, honey?"

"I just wanted to see if there was anything I can do, Mrs. Harvelle." She loiters near the door; the first rule of any kitchen is 'don't be underfoot.'

"Aw, that's nice of you. I was putting together wings for the guys. You want to make some macaroni, too?" She points out the big pot (all the pots are big in the Roadhouse kitchen, but this one is bigger) and Gwen fills it with water. It's so heavy she struggles with it, but Mrs. Harvelle seems to approve when she gets to back to the range by herself. She even gets the fire burning under it without help.

Mrs. Harvelle smiles. "You're getting good at that, honey."

"Yeah, I guess. I help Momma sometimes, and Dad lets me train with him and Christian, so..." she shrugs. Mrs. Harvelle frowns a little, but nods. "Mrs. Harvelle, can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"What's going on?"

And the look on her face changes completely. She sets down the bowl she was taking to the sink, and wipes her hands on a cloth. The tight look around her mouth seems more like the expression she wears when she's talking to Momma than when she's talking to Gwen. "Your Momma didn't tell you?"

"No, ma'am, she said I should be quiet for now."

"Well, put that macaroni in and have a seat. You might as well know."

"Thank you, Mrs. Harvelle."

"And if you're old enough to know, you're old enough to call me Ellen." They settle down on the stools at the end of the kitchen, rejects from the bar that Gwen had been assigned to dragging in last year. "Do you know Tommy Murphy? He was at that fourth of July party. He- he was a hunter."

"Right, I- he showed me how to take apart a rifle. Dad only ever showed me a shotgun."

Ellen smiles. "Well, I suppose you're a little young for rifles just yet. And a little small, still." Which is true. Gwen is scrawny and pathetic. If she's lucky, she'll grow up like Ellen, who looks beautiful and cheerful, like she’s always about to smile- but Gwen figures she'll probably end up being stick-like and angry looking. "He was off on a hunt, with his wife Amanda, and with two other hunters for backup, Michael Grover and George Levit. And they all were found dead. That was last night; we just got the word this morning."

"Oh." It's weird, to think of that happening. Hunting is dangerous, sure. She's read Bridge to Terebithia more than she'd like to, thanks to all the school's she's been to, so she knows that people die. Hunters are different, a little like friends you don’t want to lose but also like heroes who are supposed to go down fighting. "Is someone going to get the thing that got them?"

Ellen cocks her head. "Well, I don't know. You see, he had a best friend and hunting partner, you remember? The big guy they called Red?"

Gwen remembers. He had a huge red beard, and a really long moustache- but on his head he had no hair at all.

"He was killed by a vampire last week. So he's not going to be looking into this. And whatever it was that killed Tommy and the others, no one really wants to face it down- do you understand? No one wants to go the same way. So unless we spot more signs that it's causing trouble..." Ellen shrugs, and goes to stir the macaroni. For her, this seems to be all there is to say.

Gwen stays seated for a moment, perched on a stool too high for her. This isn't all there is to it for her. "But we're hunters. We kill the monsters; we don't just let them go."

"Oh, honey. We do our best, but sometimes you gotta just try to walk away. Death will find you soon enough; you do your grieving when it's safe to do that, and then you move on. You don't go on suicide missions for people you barely knew. We've still got the living to guard." She motions to the door with the spoon. "Those guys out there? That's what they're doing. They're toasting the memories of their friends, because it's safe to, here. Then they'll go on to whatever they were going to hunt."

It doesn't seem right, somehow, to Gwen. A fallen hero is supposed to be a hero, right? You don't just move on, or get over it. When a knight dies in battle, his friends kill the ones who killed him in his memory- that's the way it works, always. Someone has to get revenge. The hero can't just die without consequences.

She spends the afternoon carrying macaroni and cheese and buffalo wings to the mourning hunters. When the jukebox turns back on and Ellen and Mr. Harvelle go ahead to open the Roadhouse to everyone again, it seems strange. Gwen would like a better memorial than a plate of chicken wings.

-

Gwen goes back to that town in Vermont when she’s nineteen, and just starting her solo hunts. She learns that a traveling mystic was through the summer before, and that no one has seen the revenant of Mr. Ogilvey since.

-

“We’ve got something.” Sam doesn’t waste time on pleasantries. "Where do you want it, Samuel?"

The family, or at least the hunters who Samuel trusts, are sitting around doing group-research time. Sometimes Gwen suspects that half the reason for gathering so many hunters is for access to their resources, and she can't argue with that logic. The last few seasons have been filled with unlikely solutions and new information. She's reading journals she's never seen before, or heard of, from hunters in places she's never been. The wealth of knowledge that has never been properly collected is overwhelming.

"What is it?"

“Chupacabra,” says Sam.

“Oh, come on,” says David, “that’s farmers scaring each other. Alligators in the sewer.” 

"Well, it's in the back of the van, and it's butt ugly. The fangs are a little sharp, though, so you might not want to tell it it's fictional." Sam isn't angry at David; he's just annoyed at wasting his breath. "Samuel?"

"Take it out to the holding pen. Nothing in there anymore."

They've got a pen, something you'd use to hold tigers in, where they occasionally stick the creatures that come to them in one piece. It's not something Gwen's familiar with, but up until now she's borne it gracefully.

"Uncle?" She asks. Chris is home with Arlene, damn him, unable to ask the questions that she needs the answers to. "You're gonna keep it alive?"

"You got a problem, Gwen?" He's tall enough to loom over her.

"Maybe I do."

And bless him, he grabs her by the arm and drags her out into the hall, rather than just yelling at her there and then. "Spit it out, girl."

"What the hell are we doing with that thing? Keeping it alive?" She's really upset because this is stupid. Stupid and potentially deadly. "I know, I know- you wanted to get answers from those vamps last week, fine, whatever. But this thing isn't going to be talking anytime soon, so why the hell-"

"Because we can kill it later. There's more answers to be gained from something living than something dead." He holds her by the shoulders, looks her in the eye. "These things are new, and they're dangerous. I need to know why something that didn't exist the last time I was alive is suddenly all over the place, and I will find it out by any means I can. Sam understands that; you need to, too. We can study how it eats, what it eats, how it lives. See what it does when you give it an animal, learn about how it fights."

"We've fought one, Chris and I. We know enough."

"Really?" He shakes her gently. "You know enough? There's no such thing as knowing enough. I promise, Gwen, this thing will be gone in just a few weeks- I'll see to it myself. Do you believe me?"

This is where she lives, sleeps, eats, hunts; these people are her team, her partners, and her blood. Once she came back, there was never any chance of just taking off again. To do so would make her a quitter, a part-timer, and eventually- well, hunters may be loners but even they get screwed in isolation eventually.

Answering no would just be the end of Gwen as a hunter, Gwen with life as she knows it. And it would be untrue. Samuel is crazy as the day is long, but he's one hell of a hunter, and if anyone- anyone alive or dead- can do what he wants to (learn, study, exterminate) then it's Samuel Campbell. "Yeah. We're good. Just give me a head's up before you ex this thing, okay? I want to see it's eyes."

-

There are some upsides to working with family, and there are a lot of downsides. Gwen isn't sure if she hates it or is grateful.

The thing about Samuel is that he knows how to lead. God only knows where a hunter learned that skill, but maybe that's just it- he's a hunter, raised to it from the cradle, and he doesn't want to be anything else. There's just something about him.

The way he walks into the cage with the chupacabra, and it doesn't even get the chance to attack before he's got three bullets in it's brain (and then the cut off the head, just to be sure).

The look in his eyes when he's facing down a werewolf, full moon high in the sky and she half-way to changing. The way he uses the vampires against each other, as bait, until he's routed a whole nest.

Gwen has so many times when she just watches him, alert but- but trusting. She knows he'll see it through. And yes, when she checks with Christian, he's of the exact same opinion, it's clear. Samuel is a man who can be trusted.

-

For three weeks in Arkansas they spend a lot of time finding nothing. Christian calls Arlene, and leaves town overnight to go pay her a visit. Gwen goes out, has drinks bought for her half the night, gets a phone number and goes home to read a book. Living large sounds better in theory than it feels in practice.

It’s the Haines family farm that gets them their lead. The impressionable youngest daughter of the youngest daughter has seen a giant lizard-like beast, with terrible fangs and claws, in the sheep-pen. Christian goes in as a specialist from the wildlife department, and tracks the damn thing for five miles. Gwen’s pretty sure that they’ve got a good idea of where the nest, or den, or whatever is, and they spend a day prepping for it.

“So what kills them?”

“I don’t know,” says Gwen. She’s been looking for days for more information, calling hunters and asking them to check, but no one had heard of one of these things a hundred years ago, and so far, no one has a confirmed method of killing. Shooting it until it’s still and then blowing up the body may have worked for a hunter in Puerto Rico. Unfortunately Gwen forgot to bring any TNT.

“Well, figure it out.”

“As near I can tell it’s just another animal, so you kill it like you kill anything else running around- just destroy it thoroughly enough and it won’t pester you again.” 

They go after it with everything they’ve got. Gwen loads her shotgun with slugs. Christian takes the M4. He must have gotten it out of storage when he went to see Arlene, or maybe she had fetched it for him.

They go at night. It’s riskier, taking guns out at night, but it does avoid some of the questions they really don’t want to be asked by the neighbors. There’re whole stretches of dead farmland and overgrown fields that they can search through, but Gwen has a theory.

“It needs water, right?”

She’s right, it does need water, and there's only a few creeks through it's territory. They find tracks- kind of like a coyote, if it were three times the size- and follow it (slowly) up a shallow slope. She takes one side of the little creek, and he takes the other, but there are fallen trees groundhog holes, and they end up barely able to keep each other in sight. It makes Gwen nervous. She spends more time keeping an eye on Chris than she does looking out for the damn monster.

There’s a flash of something not twenty feet behind him.

“Chris!”

He spins, barely getting the time to aim and fire before the thing is on him. The burst from his gun is loud and bright. Blood sprays, dark and viscous and slightly smelly, a sure sign of the supernatural. Christian goes down under the weight of a monster the size of a deer.

She’s already closed half the distance by the time he hits the ground. She jumps the stream, stumbles over a gopher hole even as she’s pulling her knife; she’s not going to shoot while the thing is on top of her brother. There’s a scrambling sound behind her but she can’t worry about that, if it’s got a mate, it doesn’t matter because the beast has wicked fangs and they’re about to go through Christian’s throat.

She stabs hard. Her whole weight, the momentum of her run, it all goes into the motion and she falls down, knocking the chupacabra as she slips. The knife slides over scale. The chupacabra raises it’s head, intrigued. Christian rolls away while it’s distracted, and Gwen is fumbling to get her shotgun up and in place. It growls, and starts towards Christian, again. Is he hurt?

She gets off a round and this time the monster clearly feels it. It staggers and falls, but doesn’t make any attempt to to flee. Maybe it’s like that. Some things, the supernatural and the evil creatures, they don’t have a sense of self-preservation. They will work towards destruction until they themselves are destroyed. It’s an ugly trait that's killed more than a few hunters, but you take what advantages you have.

“Back off!” yells Christian, and Gwen realizes she’s been moving in on the thing again, that she racked the pump without thinking. Stupid, stupid, and she’ll be mad at herself later, but now is not the time.

The chubacabra growls, low and angry. It’s muscles tense and it’s looking right at her. She’s not the only one who has been moving in.

The report from Christian’s carbine is terrible, and it leaves her deaf, even more than the shotgun though the distance is greater. There’s warmth on her shoes. The chupacabra is bleeding out, all over her. She steps back quickly.

“......, …., ….. …. …..........” says Christian. She can see his mouth moving, but not the words he’s saying. He realizes what’s going on, and points to his own ears. She nods. He seems fine, if a little shaken; he’s a tough guy but he’s not stupid, he knows to stop and take care of injuries.

She turns to do a quick sweep of the area. If nothing else it would be nice to see where the thing had denned, just to know a little more about these creatures. Unless this is the only one, and they aren’t going to have to kill one again- but there’s never a guarantee.

The moonlight is mostly helpful. Shadows are cast here and there, but the forest is thin, more trees brought down than still standing.

It’s easy to recognize the den under a fallen tree. It’s easy because of the chupacabra pup still scrambling out.

Ah.

That would explain a lot.

The pup is caught, maybe in the uptorn roots. She raises her shotgun, aims, and fires. The dirt next to the pup explodes. The little thing is trying to scramble backwards, wailing, as she works the action again, and her next shot is a clean kill. There’s no reason to torture the creature.

They give up searching for the other pups at sunrise, but neither of them is willing to count on her only having had one. Most likely they have litters.

“We don’t know how many of those things got away?”

“No, no we don’t, Chris.”

“And we don’t know what they’ll do without their mother.”

“Or if they even will survive. Or if there was a father out there- do they mate?”

Christian marches across the room. They’ve got a suite, a coffeemaker with a little sink, and it’s a miracle he doesn’t break the carafe as he rinses it out, fills it again. This is bad. They went in without enough information, and now they don’t know what the fallout will be.

Gwen tries again. “Look, Christian, there’s no way we could have known. There’s literally no information out there on these things, they’re so rare. Or new.”

“And now what? You lose the hunt and who knows what the hell will happen.” He’s right. They know this. They’re supposed to know this.

“Christian, maybe you should go, spend some time with Arlene. I think we both could use a break,” she says.

“We’re getting married. I asked her last week. We’re gonna tell Dad and Momma soon.” He doesn’t look her when he says this, just throws it out there. “I think maybe I should just go with her, until the wedding. We’re thinking next summer. She needs some time to get used to the hunting life, you know...”

“Oh.”

They meet up again a few times. Gwen spends a month looking for the pups that got away, but there’s no clear pattern. She’s pretty sure that they don’t keep a steady home unless they’re trying to raise a brood. Wonderful.

-

The demon they're hunting is a bad one. She's black-eyed and cruel, and more than a few dead bodies have been laying in her wake. Samuel is getting impatient with them, and Sam's just driven. Gwen half expects him to take off in the middle of the night without any of the rest of them, but if he’s stuck around this long maybe he’ll stay a while longer. Ten years ago it might have mattered one way or the other. At thirty-four she hardly cares.

They corner the demon in a barn on an abandoned agra-business farm. It’s huge, and flammable, and there’s still equipment lying around that could cut anyone stupid enough to trip over it. Summer’s heat brings out the remainder of farm smell, too, so nasty it is distracting.

Gwen is careful. She doesn’t trip.

They don’t get her into the first three devil’s traps they set. There’s only one more, and she seems to sense it. Gwen’s feinting in, shotgun ready and cocked, but she's out of salt rounds (the rest are with Christian. Not the time to fight about it, but later-)

Mark swings in from behind with an iron rod. The demon falls to the ground, but a moment later so does he- she knocks his legs out from under him, and he's still. Gwen swallows, and glares.

"Now, that was really nice. But there's a lot more of us than there are of you. You might as well either get out or give in, because we're gonna get you before you can take us all down. You know that." It's a bluff, and worse than that, it's stalling. She doesn't have any of the other guys at her back. They got separated around the milking machines and she doesn't even know if they're okay, but there's no time. If she can talk this thing into stumbling its way into a Devil's Trap, fine, and if not, at least she can fight another day. Maybe. "So why don't you take a step back from him?"

The demon is on her feet again, laughing, and her teeth look- are they sharpened? It's disgusting. "Oh, I don't think so. I think you're out of rounds, there, and I think that means you're mine." 

Then Sam bursts in, fires a salt round right into her chest. She screams and stumbles back, but doesn't fall again. Christian and Samuel are there, behind Gwen before she registers footsteps. The demon's hand comes and and Sam- he just steps aside, as if ducking her power. David doesn't.

The sight of a grown man flying through the air because some monster decided it was so will always seem wrong and unnatural. But the sight of a cousin speared from pelvis to head on a rusty sickle-bar is the one she's really never going to forget. Samuel winces, so close she can feel the air move.

Then Sam has the demon in a bucket of holy water, and they drag the half-conscious monster into a Devil's Trap quite literally kicking and screaming. The exorcism is short, and follows a rather nasty little interrogation. No one is surprised that once the demon is gone the meat-suit is long dead.

"What should we do with him?" asks Sam, pointing to David's body.

Samuel walks over and inspects him. Gwen tries not to shudder; she's seen worse, just not on people she's known. "We take him off this and burn him. Actually, we might want to torch the iron, too, just to be sure."

And that's it. Christian doesn't look much more impressed than Samuel, and Sam doesn't seem to care about anything so petty as a corpse. He stops to check Mark. Gwen is the only one openly pleased with finding their cousin is still alive, so that gets tamped down pretty quickly while Mark waits for them to clean up. He may not be the most relateable guy but he’s a hunter. She shakes her head as they wrap the body in a tarp to throw in the back of the van, and it's her and Samuel who end up carrying the sickle-bar out to the farm's pond where they burn it in the sand.

"You be careful," says Samuel to her, out of nowhere. "I don't like burying family, and this is what happens to all of our kind. You watch yourself, Gwen. I don't want the next body we burn to be you."

-

“You know what it was, Christian,” she tells him as they pack up their father’s weapons. He just wraps another shotgun. Momma says doesn’t want any of them beyond the few guns that were always hers, they remind her too much of Dad. It’s too soon for mementos.

“I know what it could have been. Gwen... it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“His ashes are barely cold, and already it doesn’t matter?”

“No, not- He’s gone, and we made the mistakes we made. I’ve got a life here, and- and I’m not going to go beating myself up over what might have happened.”

He’s got a point. She’s read enough stories, true and fiction, to know what happens. Neither Captain Ahab nor Javert led joyous lives, and they didn’t have particularly useful deaths, either. Sometimes it’s better to just let it go, to understand that you do what you can and the rest will be what it is.

It’s simple enough. Their mother is a strong woman, and she’ll find her own way. Gwen and Christian will look after her as best they can, that’s what they agreed, but Momma made it clear she doesn’t want them around too much. She says she’s done raising them, and has no interest in being the tag-a-long to another hunter. In all fairness, Gwen can see that. It’s a hard life, and maybe a person is entitled to some sort of peace after a time.

“So, how’s married life?”

Christian smiles. “It’s wonderful. We’re gonna have kids, as soon as we can.”

They part ways after three more days of moving and packing. Their mother still cries, but she sends them on anyways.

They keep up, but it’s not what it was.

-

Gwen takes charge of burning David's body the night he dies. She says it's because she's too keyed up to sleep, but actually it's because she's the only person on the compound who won't mind staying 'til the pyre is out. 

Sparks fly off into the night. It's still cold out, and she doesn't think too many people are having bonfires, but it's worthwhile to be careful, anyways. She's out back, behind a great forest in what used to be a parking lot and is now just so much gravel and broken pavement.

This is what it is, to be a hunter. You work alone and your death goes unpunished. You work with family and they burn your body next to the burned out corpse of a Dollar General. There's no time to stop and think; to remember. And there's no way to mourn, to really stop and remember someone who is gone.

Your family lets you die. Or no one else is responsible and you do it on your own.

She's never been thanked, not really. There's nothing else out there. She's not a knight in shining armor, and her life isn't a story that anyone can tell and be proud of. She's not who she thought she'd be.

Gwen Campbell grew up to be a hunter.


End file.
